All Gens The Toxicroak Effect

So you people may be wondering, what exactly is "The Toxicroak Effect"? It's simple, it's when a Pokemon is OU or OU-viable not because of any special changes it recieved, but because the metagame around it has adapted so that it is better there. I know of a few Pokemon to which this effect applies to, either in whole or in part, but I'm curious: what other Pokemon fall under this effect?

I'll start by listing the namesake of this effect, Toxicroak.

Toxicroak

While the changes in Drain Punch's mechanics and its availability to Toxicroak may have contributed somewhat to its rise to OU in the 5th Gen, the real cause of its ascension is the advent and subsequent pseudo-domination of permarain in OU. With a reliable source of rain, Toxicroak could reliably abuse Dry Skin, and was used on rain teams as a way to break through the Pokemon they so often struggled against.

BTW is Gen V considered a 'past gen' yet? If not, is it OK for this thread to still exist?

Gen V still technically has its own subforum (BW metagames), but because I like this topic and it seems to merely use a Gen V example rather than requiring the whole discussion to be about Gen V, I'll let it stay here.

That being said, I don't think I could name any examples from RBY -> GSC that fit this mold. Almost everything that got better got something new, whether it be improved defenses via the Special split, a special item, or an expanded movepool. I guess Muk comes close, but he really isn't all that good

I'd actually be hard-pressed to find examples of an inverse of this effect in GSC: most things that got worse lost something real, either through retooled crit rates (e.g. Tauros) or getting shafted by the Special split (e.g., Alakazam). I suppose Lapras comes close to an inverse Toxicroak effect in GSC, I mean it has the reduced Blizzard accuracy but the main source of its woes it mostly just all the new things capable of tanking it to hell and back.

I think Gen IV to Gen V is the most fertile hunting-ground for a couple of reasons:

No major completely new battle mechanics (whereas gen II introduced items, gen III introduced EVs, natures and abilities and Gen IV changed the physical/special move classification), so more stuff can be unchanged.
Rain (and to a lesser extent sun) made a ton of things (non-)viable.

Anyway, I can think of several "reverse Toxicroaks" from Gen IV to V

Snorlax: Couldn't cope with new Fighting-types, rain hindered its special walling capabilities. (I guess you could argue that Rest was nerfed too).

Aerodactyl: Team preview rendered various dedicated leads obsolete, and Aerodactyl suffered worse. Also became mostly outclassed by Terrakion.

I suppose in ADV, Blissey's rise to power was partially a function of it being able to actually use moves, but another part of it is just that, unlike other walls, it doesn't really need EVs outside of Defense to be a sick tank, so the walls around it just got worse while Blissey didn't take a huge hit.

There's also Jolteon, who I see a lot more often in ADV than I do in GSC, and that can't all be due to Volt Absorb. Rather, its popularity seems to stem from its ridiculous speed being more important for revenging and dodging Duggy's Arena Trap. Ergo, its Speed, which it always had, was made more important by the things around it rather than any new tools he got to abuse that speed.

I'm going to count coming close on this topic, as well as inverses. Though I really just thought Lapras was OU in Gen 1 due to moves it got in Gen 2 :/.

Click to expand...

GSC tradeback moves are illegal in competitive RBY as it's usually played. Lapras is OU in RBY because of its god-tier stats, excellent STAB, and access to the crucial coverage moves Body Slam and Thunderbolt plus a couple of rare status moves (Sing and Confuse Ray).

In GSC OU there's Tentacruel. It did get Sludge Bomb, but it already had RBY Hyper Beam to utilise Swords Dance. What made it good in GSC despite its BL status in RBY were three major metagame changes: 1) the metagame got much slower, turning Tentacruel's 100 Speed from being "not quite good enough" to "excellent"; 2) the heavy nerf of almost all Psychic Pokemon meant that Tentacruel wasn't getting hit for super-effective STAB by half of OU anymore; 3) Poison typing actually starts to have benefits in GSC since Toxic is actually used (rather than being laughed at like in RBY), and there are a couple of good Fighting moves that get used.

There's also Mew in GSC Ubers. Mew didn't really gain much in GSC (Shadow Ball's about it, and that's not even STAB), and it lost Hyper Beam, but Mewtwo's heavy nerf and the existence of a dozen powerful walls made its Swords Dance and Explosion even more useful, to the point where it competes for "best Uber" with Lugia.

Ah, that's a pretty cool thread idea! Might as well post. I'm only gonna mention some Pokemon that got better thanks to the metagame shift. While writing this post, I realized how much Pokemon didn't really fall under that thread idea since a lot of them mainly became good thanks to the introduction of some Items/Moves/New mechanics (Marowak, Gyarados, Dugtrio, etc).

RBY → GSC

Machamp
Not really a good pokemon in RBY due to the tier being heavily influenced by Psychic types and not having a really useful set of resistances. Became really good in GSC thanks to its amazing stallbreaking abilities (and the introduction of Curse I guess).

ADV → DPP

Tentacruel
Tentacruel isn't really that useful in ADV since it's outclassed by a ton of Pokemons as both a Rapin Spinner (Starmie, Claydol, Forretress) and a Sweeper. In DPP, however, his typing and stats spread became more useful since it nows check new top threats such as Scizor or Infernape (while not being to U-turn/Pursuit, unlike Starmie). Spinning also became much more "relevant" (not that it wasn't in ADV) since every team at least carry Stealth Rock.

DPP → BW

Tentacruel
Once again, I feel like Tentacruel deserves to be mentionned. Just like Toxicroak, being mentionned earlier in that thread, it went from an "useful" Pokemon in DPP to one of the top Pokemon in BW since there is perma Rain to give him a solid way to recover damages.

i guess tentacruel is borderline. he is kind of bad in DPP and if DPP's OU was not defined by usage statistics, and was subjective like ADV i'd say it could be UU. however it seems to be a better answer than anything i can get... tentacruel didn't get rain dish in DPP either and i expect he would be distinctively average in BW without that ability

i would say venusaur is slightly better in DPP OU than ADV OU and it got no new toys aside from a special sludge bomb. zapdos was absurdly popular in early DP with a sleep talk set, however i don't know whether it was 'better' than ADV zapdos mainly cause i wasn't around then. zapdos was also apparently more popular in 'old adv' compared to 'new adv' since in old adv sdef zapdos didn't have to deal with things such as CM spam and max satk suicune as often.

vaporeon improved moving into gen 4 most likely due to the introduction of better fire types. swampert couldn't check heatran as reliably and infernape was of course annoying. in adv, one flinch from +1 dd tar or aero meant it was over for vaporeon and so it was not as reliable as swampert or suicune as a bulky water since they could recover from rock slide flinches. however vaporeon kind of struggles vs. stone edge variants of those pokes but it can phaze/toxic dd tar's at worst.

can't think of any more off the top of my head although i wonder if tyranitar is 'better' in ADV or DPP....

Bisharp is a decent example for this gen; although it certainly benefits from a far stronger STAB and a change in the resistances of Steel, Defog is a big part of what allows it to break the OU-UU gap.

I'm also gonna put forth Manaphy in BW. Drizzle existing in OU turned what would pretty much have been a strong yet certainly not overpowered Pokemon into something banworthy.

Ah, that's a pretty cool thread idea! Might as well post. I'm only gonna mention some Pokemon that got better thanks to the metagame shift. While writing this post, I realized how much Pokemon didn't really fall under that thread idea since a lot of them mainly became good thanks to the introduction of some Items/Moves/New mechanics (Marowak, Gyarados, Dugtrio, etc).

RBY → GSC

Machamp
Not really a good pokemon in RBY due to the tier being heavily influenced by Psychic types and not having a really useful set of resistances. Became really good in GSC thanks to its amazing stallbreaking abilities (and the introduction of Curse I guess).

Machamp
Not really a good pokemon in RBY due to the tier being heavily influenced by Psychic types and not having a really useful set of resistances. Became really good in GSC thanks to its amazing stallbreaking abilities (and the introduction of Curse I guess).

Oh, I thought of another one. Houndoom from GSC -> ADV might count. In GSC Houndoom is a gimmicky mon mostly used for countering Exeggutor & Ghosts while maybe getting the Sunny Day sweep. In ADV, with the roaring popularity of Gengar and Celebi (more popular than Gengar and Egg are in GSC), Houndoom went from fragile answer to common threats to fragile answer to ubiquitous threats.

I would have to nominate Gastrodon from dpp to bw.
In dpp Gastrodon was usable in nu and uu but it faced competition form other bulky water types like Milotic.
Then black and white came and made rain teams really popular. The only real things Gastrodon gained from dpp to bw was the new storm drain and scald but it was still the metagame around it that made it ou.

(Fifth gen) Storm Drain on a Water-neutral 'mon is amazingly good, though. If it didn't have Storm Drain it still wouldn't be OU. So it's not an example at all.

Nidoking, from RBY+Tradebacks to GSC, probably counts. It had LK in Tradebacks but it still sucked. GSC rolls around and hey presto, Psychic-types and Blizzard aren't everywhere anymore.

Starmie probably counts as an inverse from RBY to GSC; the reason it's not a threat in GSC is because a) other, bulkier, stuff got reliable recovery in RestTalk, whereas it was previously the bulkiest thing with recovery; b) instead of luring the weak-link Chansey, it lures the newly-buffed strong-link Snorlax.

Ah, that's a pretty cool thread idea! Might as well post. I'm only gonna mention some Pokemon that got better thanks to the metagame shift. While writing this post, I realized how much Pokemon didn't really fall under that thread idea since a lot of them mainly became good thanks to the introduction of some Items/Moves/New mechanics (Marowak, Gyarados, Dugtrio, etc).

RBY → GSC

Machamp
Not really a good pokemon in RBY due to the tier being heavily influenced by Psychic types and not having a really useful set of resistances. Became really good in GSC thanks to its amazing stallbreaking abilities (and the introduction of Curse I guess).

Also with Snorlax becoming the king of GSC OU and the introduction of Dark and Steel types (both weak to fighting) gave Machamp a huge buff in usability.

Click to expand...

Not that big a deal. The "standard" RBY team has four Fighting weaknesses (Tauros, Snorlax, Chansey, and Rhydon/Golem). The things that made it good were:

1) Not every team has a Fighting resist anymore, since Egg's only "common" instead of "omnipresent" and Zam/Mie are "rare"/"uncommon" respectively instead of "common" (Zapdos did get a lot more common but it's nowhere near as omnipresent as Egg was in RBY and in GSC it's usually not running Drill Peck)
2) Cross Chop gives it a legit STAB (in RBY, it's limited to the inaccurate, weak, and recoil-ridden Submission)
3) Hidden Power Bug means it can actually hurt Mie and Egg instead of being lolhardwalled (Mie still counters it, but it's not a hard wall anymore)

Only the first of these is a metagame shift effect; the other two are legitimate buffs to Machamp itself.

If going by strictly tier placement, there's Donphan in 5th Gen. It's OU for a reason I will never know. It's not a good candidate really for me to bring up, I literally cannot tell you what it does special. Never used it. It's probably its typing, physical stats, and Sturdy which works for a handful of player's teams. It's pretty much the same Pokemon it was in 4th Gen (except for the buffed Sturdy in BW, but it's not like he can take advantage of that all the time). He was more common in the early days of DP when Ice Shard hit more Dragons, but in Platinum, it's so grounded. So many wall and counter it. Assurance can only go so far when hitting Ghosts. Unlike Hippowdon (who has recovery), you shouldn't try to take Special attacks. The biggest thing, Starmie just provides so much better Rapid Spin support for any team. Possibly anyone with more experience on BW Donphan to shed some light?

Good idea Aerodactyl Legend, Donphan is indeed OU in BW just because he has a niche as a Spinner in Sun Teams and sometimes in Rain Team. The ability to spin is quite valuable itself, but it can also damage Jellicent with EQ on the switch given enough Atk investement.

Its Rock resist and ability to check Dragons is what gives it a niche over Forretress in Sun and Rain team (especially the former one where checking Tyranitar/Dragons isn't really easy).

Donphan actually fits this thread idea perfectly, it really didn't get a single new tool and just got in OU Usage thanks to the metagame shift.

Bassically rain spam happened (which helped its fire weakness which changes stuff like 252 Atk Life Orb Infernape Flare Blitz vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Forretress: 499-593 (140.9 - 167.5%) -- guaranteed OHKO to 252 Atk Life Orb Infernape Flare Blitz vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Forretress in Rain: 250-296 (70.6 - 83.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery) so you could get even MORE stuff set up before you die, or get a rapid spin up so your sweeper can switch in and not die. I assumed this because in February 2014 there was 8.37456% usage for Forretress in DPP OU and 9.93636% in BW OU. Which is a whole 1.5618% more usage.

Also shed is pretty much even worse now because its weakness is the most common move ever.

Forretress got Volt Switch, which is pretty important for it. Possibly the slowest switch that you'd ever see in BW OU is useful on a bulky Pokemon that can tank a hit. A buffed sturdy's also pretty cool and situationally useful at times, too.

I assumed this because in February 2014 there was 8.37456% usage for Forretress in DPP OU and 9.93636% in BW OU. Which is a whole 1.5618% more usage.

Click to expand...

You have no training in statistics. If you did, you'd have looked at the past stats and realised that usage rates vary with time and that one data point is laughably insufficient to draw statistical significance from with a difference this small (pro tip: last month you'd have drawn the opposite conclusion).

What really gave away that you don't know shit about statistics, though, is your appalling use of significant figures.

It really pisses me off when people with no background in maths try quoting statistics despite having no clue how to interpret them. When you understand what a t-test is, and have run one on your data, we'll have something to discuss; until then you're just a fool misleading people with numbers that don't mean a damned thing.